Another Question Starmer Dare Not Not Answer

Why Did the Prime Minister Refuse to Confirm if the Rape Gang Consultation is Genuine?

This government did not want the grooming gang inquiry. This is a matter of public record.

In January 2025, Labour whipped its MPs to vote down a national statutory inquiry. When that vote was called, Keir Starmer accused Conservatives of jumping on the bandwagon and amplifying the far right. He said this about people demanding justice for children who had been raped in industrial quantities for decades.

Following public outrage, and under pressure, Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, announced five locally-led inquiries instead. She tried to hide how these inquiries would have no statutory powers, no names attached to four of the five locations, and no mechanism to feed evidence back to the Home Office for a national response.

As the government tried to force through their proposals, we exposed how, without powers under the Inquiries Act 2005 to compel witnesses, take evidence under oath and requisition written evidence, these inquiries would be a whitewash. We also pointed out how five local investigations barely scratched the surface of the national scale of this scandal.

When pressed on whether she would order a national inquiry, Cooper told interviewers the government had already had one. She repeated this argument across multiple interviews. We pointed out how the inquiry she made reference to, the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), had avoided investigating the grooming gangs.

Despite being exposed, Cooper maintained local inquiries would go further than a national one. As late as May 2025, she was still publicly rejecting calls for a national probe, describing it as unnecessary because a seven-year statutory inquiry had already taken place.

On 14 June 2025, two days before a parliamentary vote the government was going to lose, Starmer announced he had read every word of the Casey audit and would accept its recommendation for a national inquiry.

The audit had found case files where the word "Pakistani" had been tippexed out. It found that ethnicity data had been shied away from. It found institutional obfuscation where there should have been examination.

The government had commissioned that audit in January, received findings that confirmed everything campaigners had been saying for years, and used the publication to announce an inquiry it had spent five months refusing to hold.

The vote on a new clause to the Crime and Policing Bill establishing a national statutory inquiry was scheduled for the following week.

Within four months of the announcement, the process had collapsed from the inside.

Survivors on the victims and survivors liaison panel were sent confidentiality agreements. They were told not to speak to each other, their families or friends about any concerns, but to direct them to the panel instead. The Home Office held meetings without telling survivors. It made decisions they could not question. It withheld information that directly affected their work. Consultation documents were circulated asking whether the inquiry should take a broader approach beyond grooming gangs.

When Fiona Goddard asked Jess Phillips directly what that meant, Phillips said the reason for the question was that there had been differing views and it was not right for her to make the decision without formally consulting on it.

On 20 October 2025, Fiona Goddard resigned. She said the secretive conduct and conditions imposed on survivors had led to a toxic, fearful environment, with a high risk of people feeling silenced all over again. Hours later, Ellie-Ann Reynolds resigned. She said the remit of the inquiry had been widened to downplay the racial and religious motivations behind the abuse. Reynolds, who as a child had been raped by a gang of Pakistani brothers in Barrow, said the process had been scripted and structured. Survivors were told what they could and could not say. She described it as gaslighting , conditioning them not to raise where their abusers came from or what ethnicity they were. A third survivor, known only as Elizabeth, resigned the following day. She said the process had felt scripted and predetermined rather than emerging from honest, open dialogue. She said survivors were being used to legitimise decisions that had already been made.

The government's response was to write to the Home Affairs Committee. Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp stood up in Parliament holding that letter and asked whether the government was seriously implying that Fiona and Ellie, who had been disbelieved and called liars by the British state their entire lives, were spreading misinformation about a process they had been directly involved in. The government did not withdraw the letter.

Nonetheless, both shortlisted chairs, one a former police officer, the other a social worker, withdrew. These were people drawn from the exact institutions accused of covering up the abuse. The victims' liaison panel was subsequently scrapped.

Baroness Anne Longfield

Then came the actual chair appointment. Baroness Anne Longfield was elevated to the Lords in December 2024 and took the Labour whip in February 2025. In September 2025, three months before taking the job, she endorsed Bridget Phillipson in the Labour Party deputy leadership election. She was appointed chair of the inquiry in December 2025 and told the public she would resign the Labour whip for the duration.

The second panel member, Zoë Billingham, is also a registered Labour Party member. Two of the three people running this inquiry have direct, documented ties to the party whose councillors, officials and MPs ran the towns where these crimes happened and were concealed. Survivor Fiona Goddard, abused by a gang in Bradford, said: "This is not an independent inquiry. The Government clearly wants to control the narrative. There is no other explanation. I'm completely disheartened."

Draft Terms of Reference

On 9 December 2025, the same day the chair was announced, the Home Secretary published draft terms of reference. Consultation on these draft terms was opened in the new year.

The draft terms are clearly inadequate. Even Labour's Sarah Champion, has joined with Conservative MPs and demanding drastic revisions.

Whatever the public submits in response, the final terms will be agreed with the Home Secretary. The government wrote them. The government will sign them off. The consultation is what happens in between.

In Parliament today, Katie Lam MP asked Starmer whether the consultation is real. She told him the terms of reference exclude the role of race and religion. She told him thse terms of reference would result in officials who concealed abuse, not facing prosecution through the inquiry. She also asked a direct question: if victims and members of the public submit responses demanding those issues be included, will the government change the terms?

He would not answer. He changed the subject and attacked her.

The consultation closes this week. This is the same government that;

• called people demanding justice far-right
• That announced powerless local reviews as a substitute for a real inquiry
• That capitulated only when it counted the votes and came up short
• That accused survivors of spreading misinformation
• That scrapped the panel those survivors sat on
• That after failing to appoint a former police officer with Labour Party links as chair then appointed a Labour baroness, who was endorsing Labour leadership candidates three months before taking the job, to chair an investigation into what happened in Labour-run towns
• That drafted the terms itself and reserved the right to finalise them regardless of what the public submits.

This is the same government cannot confirm on the record that the consultation will change anything.

Starmer had one question in front of him. He chose not to answer it. That choice is itself an answer.

Every step of this process has followed the same pattern. They denied the scandal was real and smeared those raising it as far-right. Then they resisted an inquiry for months, then agreed to it two days before losing a vote. When forced to act, they announced five powerless local reviews with no statutory authority and no names attached. When pushed further, they commissioned a rapid audit and used its publication to announce the inquiry they had spent five months refusing to hold. When survivors raised concerns about the scope, the government called it misinformation. When those survivors resigned and went public, they were accused of lying about a process they had been inside.

When the process collapsed and both proposed chairs ran away, they relaunched it with a Labour baroness who had been endorsing Labour leadership candidates three months before taking the job. When asked today whether the consultation is real, Starmer attacked the MP asking the question.

Deny. Obstruct. Dilute. Capture. That is not a pattern of reluctance. That is a strategy.

A government that has done all of that, and cannot answer a single straight question about whether any of it means anything, has told you everything you need to know about whether this National Inquiry will be a whitewash.

Our job now is not just to expose the whitewash and shame those responsible, it is to use the cover up to remove these people from power and replace them with those who will conduct a genuine inquiry, prosecute those who covered it up, and deliver justice to the children who were failed.

I’m Raja Miah MBE. For seven years, I led a campaign that exposed how senior Labour politicians helped protect Pakistani rape gangs. The people of my town helped force the national inquiry.

You won’t see me on the BBC. You won’t read my work in the legacy press. That’s not an accident. I take this to a place from where there is no coming back.

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